Meet the real “Popeye, the Sailor Man”…
His real name was Frank “Rocky” Fiegel.
He was born in 1868 in Poland and, as a child, immigrated to the United States with his family, settling in a small town in Illinois.
As a young man, Frank “Rocky” Fiegel went to sea. After a 20-year career as a sailor in the Merchant Marines, he retired. He was later hired as a bouncer by Wiebusch’s Tavern in the city of Chester, Illinois.
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Rocky quickly developed a reputation for always being involved in fights. As a result, one of his eyes was deformed (“pop-eye”).
He also always smoked his pipe, so he always spoke out of one side of his mouth. During his time as a bouncer, Rocky would entertain the customers by regaling them with exciting stories of adventures he claimed to have had over his career as a sailor crossing the “Seven Seas.”
The creator of Popeye, Elzie Crisler Segar, grew up in Chester and, as a young man, met Rocky at the tavern, where he would sit for hours listening to the old sailor’s amazing “sea stories.”
Years later, Segar became a cartoonist and asked Fiegel if he could model his new comic strip character, “Popeye, the Sailor Man,” after him. Naturally, Fiegel was flattered and agreed.
Segar claimed that “Olive Oyl,” along with other characters, was also loosely based on an actual person: Dora Paskel, the owner of a small grocery store in Chester. She apparently looked much like the Olive Oyl character in his comics. He claimed she even dressed much the same way.
Through the years, Segar kept in touch with Rocky and always helped him with money by giving him a percentage of what he earned from his “Popeye” cartoon illustrations.
